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The Spirit of the Sword and Spear

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The Spirit of the Sword and Spear The Spirit of the Sword and Spear The Spirit of the Sword and Spear Mark Pearce From the Norse sagas or the Arthurian cycles, we are used to the concept that the warrior’s weapon has an identity, a name. In this article I shall ask whether some prehistoric weapons also had an identity. Using case studies of La Tène swords, early Iron Age central and southern Italian spearheads and middle and late Bronze Age type Boiu and type Sauerbrunn swords, I shall argue that prehistoric weapons could indeed have an identity and that this has important implications for their biographies, suggesting that they may have been conserved as heirlooms or exchanged as prestige gifts for much longer than is generally assumed, which in turn impacts our understanding of the deposition of weapons in tombs, where they may have had a ‘guardian spirit’ function. There are many ways in which we can approach the persons and events to which it is connected’. They prehistoric weapons (Pearce 2007): we can study them illustrate this point through Trobriand kula exchange. typologically, to see how their form is related to the In this article I shall take an approach which sequence of types, and we can also use that informa- is related to this latter trend, but rather than try to tion to date them, assigning them to chronological examine the biography of some prehistoric swords horizons. We can examine them functionally, and try and spears, I want to pose the question: was an identity to assess how effective they will have been as weap- attributed to some prehistoric weapons? By using the ons, or perhaps as parade paraphernalia rather than term ‘identity’ I do not mean to argue that prehistoric utilitarian equipment. We can look at use wear and try weapons were regarded as equivalent to humans, but to reconstruct how and for what purpose they were rather that they had some sort of spiritual persona used. Or we can examine them from a metallurgical (which may or may not have been nuanced as regards point of view, looking at how they were made, how aspects such as gender or ethnicity) with its own efficient their edges and points may be, or perhaps specific agency, believed to have its own intention and through chemical analysis trying to reconstruct their volition. This might have been perceived as some sort provenance. More recently other ways of looking at of in-dwelling spirit. material culture have come to the fore, and so for In order to answer the question as to whether example we might examine the ‘biography’ of the an identity was attributed to some weapons we need artefact. to ask how we can know when something has been The biographical approach, which follows the attributed an identity. I would argue that one way is life cycle of an artefact, was proposed by Igor Kopy- where it has been assigned a name, because we give toff, who emphasized that such a biography ‘would names to things to which we attribute a measure of look at … [an object] as a culturally constituted entity, personhood, and therefore agency (Dobres 2000). For endowed with culturally specific meanings, and classi- example, we give names to pets, but not necessarily fied and reclassified into culturally constituted catego- to farm animals. Another way that we attribute an ries’ (Kopytoff 1986, 68); the significance of artefacts identity, or some sort of personhood, to an object is thus changes through time in relation to their context. by giving it eyes, a face or an anthropomorphic form. Gosden and Marshall (1999, 170) add that ‘[n]ot only On the basis of these two observations, I shall do objects change through their existence, but they use some different classes of evidence to argue that often have the capability of accumulating histories, so prehistoric weapons could indeed have identities. First that the present significance of an object derives from I shall use the comparative method, looking at both Cambridge Archaeological Journal 23:1, 55–67 © 2013 McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. The online version of this article is published within an Open Access environment subject to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike licence <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/>.55 doi:10.1017/S0959774313000048 Received 22 Jun 2012; Revised 19 Oct 2012; Accepted 16 Nov 2012 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.35.234, on 28 Sep 2021 at 09:35:22, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0959774313000048 Mark Pearce medieval artefacts and literary sources, myth and epic, 6. general characteristics of the sword (e.g. ‘Long’) and then secondly, I shall work backwards in time, 7. desirable or intended characteristics of the sword looking at particular examples of swords and spears (e.g. ‘Bloodrush’) first from the Iron Age and then from the Bronze Age. 8. the sound of the sword 9. the sharpness of the sword, with reference to Weapon identities particular episodes (e.g. ‘Quern-biter’) 10. words for snakes, wolves and fire (possibly derived The idea that weapons can have names and supernatu- from poetic language in which swords are com- ral powers and consequently agency is a concept that pared to them because of their similar appearance) occurs in medieval epic, such as the twelfth-century 11. abstract concepts (e.g. ‘Agony’, ‘Honour’). Chanson de Roland (171, 2300 to 173, 2344: Roland’s He also notes that some scholars suggest that some sword Durendal could not be broken), and in the swords (such as Flæmingr) are named after Germanic Arthurian cycles. Thomas Malory’s Morte d’Arthur, tribes or ancestral groups, but that other explanations which was written about 1470 (Vinaver 1971, vi), nar- are possible. rates the story of King Arthur’s special sword named We may usefully distinguish two general classes Excalibur, which was given to him by the Lady of the of name in Barnes’s rather nuanced classification: first, Lake (Book 1, 25). This sword was so special that, on names which establish the ownership of the sword his death bed, Arthur instructed one of his knights, Sir (category 1) or which establish the sword’s previous Bedivere, to return it to the waters (Book 21, 5). The biography (categories 2 and 3), and second, names that story was used as an illustration of prehistoric ritual relate to the qualities of the sword itself (categories deposition in water by Richard Bradley (1990, 1–3), 4–11) (cf. Ellis Davidson 1962, 177). but it also attests to the concepts that weapons may Where ownership is denoted, the sword name have names and magical properties and capacities. may not be intended to indicate a specific identity Other weapons in myth cycles or epics could also (as also today we write our names on objects such as have names, and therefore identities (Ellis Davidson books), but Barnes’s classification draws our attention 1962, 82, 102, 151, 177; Barnes 1972; 1982; Kristiansen to the fact that some swords, in addition to having 2002, 329–30): for example, named swords appear names, could also have complex biographies in which, in the Old English poem, Beowulf, in which Beowulf for example, whom they belonged to, or had belonged kills Grendel’s mother with a precious sword called to, or who had made them was important (Barnes’s Hrunting lent him by Unferth (Beowulf 1455–64), and categories 2 and 3; cf. Ellis Davidson 1962, 169–75). also in the Völsunga saga, where Sigurdur Fåvnesbane’s The importance of biographies can be illustrated by sword is called Gramr (‘wrath’: chap. 15) and Fáfnir the two examples from the Norse (i.e. Norwegian and dragon’s sword has the name Hrotti (perhaps translat- Icelandic) sagas: Sigurdur’s Gramr was reforged from able as ‘the audacious one’: chap. 19). Indeed, swords the pieces of his father Sigmund’s sword by the smith, are named in all types of sagas, although infrequently, Regin (Völsunga saga, 15), and in the saga of Gísli and about 100 sword-names are known (Barnes 1972, Súrsson, the sword called Grásíða, which means ‘Grey- col. 544). Barnes notes that not all swords had names sided one’, was broken and then re-forged as a spear and that it seems to have been the custom to give a (Gísla saga Súrssonar 7: Barnes 1972, col. 547). In these sword a name only when it had proved itself in one instances, the name itself does not indicate anything way or another (1972, cols. 544–5). He groups the of their biography but in other cases it could do so, sword names in a number of categories (Barnes 1972, as in the spear Selshefnir (‘the revenger of Sel’) or the cols. 545–6): shield Viljálmsgørð (‘Viljálmr’s handiwork’) (Barnes 1. a personal name in the genitive form with the suffix 1982, col. 283). -nautr ‘gift’ (earlier owner, giver; sometimes this The sword name Curtana, or its variant Curtein, is is ironic, when the personal name is that of the first mentioned in the thirteenth century as denoting original owner who was killed by the subsequent one of the swords carried at English coronations. It owner) was supposed to be the sword of Ogier the Dane, one 2. the nickname of a (previous) owner of Charlemagne’s knights in the Chanson de Roland, 3. the name (or derived from the name) of the smith a weapon with a broken blade which had originally who made it belonged to Tristram (Ditmas 1966).
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